Tag: the human mind

Pondicherry Violence Sparks Question: Why Can’t India Interpret Hindu Gods?

More concerning is the university and police’s promptness to align with ABVP’s ideology, disregarding their obligation to operate within the framework of the Constitution of India. Instead of penalising those who commit violence, they punish the victims of violence… The list of such institutions is long where the administration has acted like the authorities of… Read More Pondicherry Violence Sparks Question: Why Can’t India Interpret Hindu Gods?

Dilip

Psychologists of Evil: Nietzsche and Dostoevsky on the Darkness of the Soul

Rouven J. Steeves Introduction: “The Light Shines in the Darkness .  .  .“ The study of politics presupposes the study of man.  The study of man demands we consider the nature of being as ensouled flesh.  This leads us into the realm of philosophy and, by extension, given that we are interested in man as… Read More Psychologists of Evil: Nietzsche and Dostoevsky on the Darkness of the Soul

Dilip

Khuda Hafiz

NB: This essay has just been published in the latest issue of Outlook magazine. Happy Easter. DS Many years ago, in the mid 1990’s, I had occasion to hire a cab in Amsterdam. It was after dinner at a friends’ place. Once inside the cab it turned out the driver was an Indian immigrant. Or… Read More Khuda Hafiz

Dilip

‘We are all unwell’: a scholar’s radical approach to health

NB: Observation by a psychoanalyst: The writer seems to know little about psychotherapy: what the latter does is validate the feelings of trauma, and provide empathy and support. How the person copes is best left to themselves and to whatever strategies, personal and collective they can creatively access or create. We all live through adolescence… Read More ‘We are all unwell’: a scholar’s radical approach to health

Dilip

Where Are the ‘Don Quixotes’ of Indian Academia?

NB: Anyone concerned about the intellectual health of their country should recall what Mao’s regime did to China’s academic life under the so-called Cultural Revolution in the late 1960’s. This was Mao Zedong’s motivated assault on academics, intellectuals and on his critics in the Communist Party leadership. Professor Frank Dikotter’s research study of this momentous… Read More Where Are the ‘Don Quixotes’ of Indian Academia?

Dilip

We think loneliness is in our heads, but its source lies in the ruin of civil society

We look for loneliness inside our heads when its source lies all around us, in the destruction of collective life, the erosion of communal bonds, the ruin of civil society, the squeezing of public spaces. Kenan Malik ‘The hope that political action will gradually humanise industrial society has given way to a determination to survive… Read More We think loneliness is in our heads, but its source lies in the ruin of civil society

Dilip

A Seamless Dystopia

What happened to the 21st-century city? Smooth City: Against Urban Perfection, Towards Collective Alternatives – BY RENE BOER this sadness is felt by so many people who find a place for themselves in a city and who know what it means to see their spaces of security, community, and openness taken away in exchange for more… Read More A Seamless Dystopia

Dilip

China Nobel Laureate for literature becomes a target in nationalist slander campaign

Amy Hawkins  At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common. But in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valour in cyberspace. Last month a patriotic blogger… Read More China Nobel Laureate for literature becomes a target in nationalist slander campaign

Dilip